'Tipping point' in AFL's problem with gendered violence

Within 12 hours of a woman reporting sexual assault allegations involving Sydney Swans players to police, CEO Matthew Pavlich held a press conference.

He referred to an "alleged incident" and expressed disappointment that the players had "found themselves in this situation".

Sports journalists and commentators quickly began analysing what it meant for the Swans' grand final prospects.

Amidst a national crisis of violence against women, victim-survivors, advocates and ex-players have called out the club's response and media's framing of the issue.

"This is decades in the making and it's a moment, a tipping point, for Australian sporting culture."

Mr Chawla has been calling for a male cultural shift to end gender-based violence since his 23-year-old sister Niki was murdered by her husband in 2015.

As an ambassador for the Carlton Respects program, he has had "very frank conversations" with players at that club about gender equality.

"It's such an ongoing issue in Australian sport, particularly within football, because we refuse to name these things and we refuse to then address them at the scale that's required," he says.

"It's just showing how secondary women and girls are in a society that will put a man who can kick a ball well ahead of the safety of women and girls."

He says it's a real opportunity for Australia to reckon with "a culture of men's entitlement that allows men to think they have access to women's bodies, that boundaries are a suggestion rather than a violation of someone else's human rights".

Language is one of the main drivers of gender-based violence and failure to centre an alleged victim and denounce all male violence has revealed a blind spot, Mr Chawla says.

"This is so much broader than the circumstances of what did or did not happen at the Pullman Hotel in East Melbourne," he said.

"It highlighted perhaps a blind spot in how to address these types of issues.

"That's probably why so many women and girls, primarily, talked to anyone who listened - they went online, they asked for more from the media, because they're so fed up with having to talk about this."